Dr. Shyam Dahiya describes what a patient can do about the excess skin they have following weight loss from bariatric surgery.

Dr. Dahiya:
Skin, unfortunately, is one organ that does not really have, where we can build muscle for it. So depending on how much you are losing, and also depending on what is your view about your image, you are going to need plastic surgery or reconstructive surgery, whatever term we use.

The excess skin, not only that it looks ugly, but it can also get to a point, depending on how much you lose, that there are folds and the folds remain wet, and during the summer time they tend to get infections and so forth. So there is a pretty good chance that if you are losing a significant weight, you are going to need some sort of a procedure along the line.

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What I do advise is that have it done when you sort of reach somewhere near your dream weight so you don’t end up having two procedures along the way. So, once you lose weight and you got excess skin, excess skin could be on the arms, it could be on the thighs, it’s most likely all the time is on the abdomen. These are called the abdominoplasty; that’s the technical term or, layperson, it’s a tummy tuck operation.

But for the arms and all that, the leg, they are called different names. Usually a plastic surgeon does that. Sometime, as far as the tummy tuck, most of our surgeons have started to do it also, so you need to look into and explore that possibility.

About Dr. Shyam L. Dahiya, M.D.:
Leading a multi-disciplinary team of experts at Doctor Bariatric is board-certified Shyam L. Dahiya, M.D. who brings more than 20 years of experience in general and trauma surgery. As a general and laparoscopic surgeon, Dr. Dahiya has performed numerous innovative bariatric surgeries including the Laparoscopic Bariatric Surgery.